“Yes, they say that’s why he understands the movements of the marionettes.” She paused. “He is one in a sense. His left leg he lost entirely. His right leg from the knee down. But he’s very musical. You have to be musical to be a master puppeteer.”
Marta and Lilo sat in a middle row of the theater, which was empty for the most part, except for the director, who sat in the front row, and Uta, who had placed herself in the very back to monitor the sound level of the recorded music.
Under the proscenium arch of the theater perched the miniature stage. It was difficult for Lilo to judge its actual dimensions. Was it ten feet wide or fifteen, and perhaps half as tall as it was wide? Then just barely above the arch but invisible from her seat was the balustrade or balcony from which the puppeteers operated the marionettes. Right now the puppeteers were visible as the curtain hiding them had not yet been drawn.
“To stage right, please!” Uta called out to Elbetta, who was operating the puppet of Papageno, the bird catcher in the opera. After a few more adjustments, the house lights were dimmed. The curtain concealing the puppeteers was drawn shut, and the music of the overture rose. Lilo blinked in disbelief. Within seconds the world in the theater had changed. The puppets, which moments before had seemed so tiny, suddenly appeared life-size. The stage seemed immense. Size and dimensions had been turned inside out. Lilo felt almost dizzy as a mystical landscape loomed up and a desperate prince, Tamino, raced through the swirling blue mists.
Then from stage right a gilded serpent slithered from the wings and began its pursuit of Tamino. Lilo was riveted. Next the Queen of the Night arrived. The costume she had sewn months before possessed a shimmering darkness. Lilo felt Marta reach out and squeeze her hand. The queen’s strings were operated by Anna, one of the artists in the sculpture department. The movement was beautiful — free of gravity, or so it seemed. Lilo loved the way the lace that trimmed the neckline seemed to drift around her shoulders when she moved. The marionettes had a fluid grace and appeared to float even when their feet tapped drily on the stage floor in the quieter sections of the music. Lilo quickly forgot about the mouths that never opened or shut with speech, because their movements were so expressive, so exquisitely delicate, that no facial gestures were needed. The face that she had previously thought of as bland acquired a sudden emotional intensity.
How did this happen? It was as if she had entered a place where none of the known laws of the physical world applied. EAT ME, DRINK ME — the words from Alice in Wonderland came back to her as she recalled the magical liquid that Alice had consumed so she could fit through the small door at the bottom of the rabbit hole. Alice then ate the cake that stretched her to an insane height. All the proportions of the world as Lilo knew them were turned inside out. The puppets loomed immense, and she felt minuscule in her seat.
“Stop!” someone yelled. The lights flickered on. The curtain was drawn back from the puppeteers’ platform. The handsome prince dangled limply — all two feet of him. His master loomed large above. It had all happened too quickly. Lilo closed her eyes for a moment and thought, Am I Alice?
“What do you mean? I can’t believe it! Not again!”
“Oh, so sorry, Sepp!” Anna apologized. It always happened this way, Lilo realized after more than a year of working at the theater. Anna, a substitute puppeteer, fouled the strings regularly in rehearsal, but by the time the performance arrived, she was fine. Sepp never raised his voice, really; his expression remained as bland as the face of the marionette he operated, which was usually the hero and seldom a villain, and yet embedded at the very center of his voice was a sneer. Lilo felt it, and she knew Anna did, too.
Lilo had been at the theater for fifteen months. It was hard to believe, but it had been three years almost to the day since she and her mother and father had been arrested and taken to Rossauer Lände police station and jail in Vienna. Three years! It was September 1943, and she was now eighteen years old. She would have been going into her last year at the Franz Joseph School on Hartigasse. The people at the theater appreciated her skills, but Marta avoided socializing with any of them outside of work. She and Lilo had fallen into a pleasant routine and would still return to the flat for lunch. But just being able to walk outside felt wonderful, and she did often wear the scarf Dieter and Bruno and Frank had given her for Christmas. She continued to read the papers voraciously, as the rumor mills about new labor camps being built continued to proliferate.
“They” was how Marta, in the privacy of the flat, always referred to the Nazis, and “him” or “he” was what she called Hitler. It was a kind of code that Lilo became aware of very quickly. She realized that Bruno, Dieter, and Frank had been using it, too, whenever they would drop in for brief visits. It was their form of resistance — passive resistance, but resistance nonetheless. To name something was to credit it, acknowledge it, give it dignity. To refer to it without a name but just as a pronoun was to mark it as she and her mother had both been marked at Buchenwald.
“My God!” Lilo exclaimed as they walked home from work and stopped at a newsstand. “They’re evacuating Berlin!” The headline blared the news. They bought the paper and rushed back to the flat.
“It’s just civilians, but still.” Lilo made no attempt to muffle her joy.
“Have you read anything about carrots?” Marta asked.
Lilo looked up from the paper. “Carrots? What do carrots have to do with this?”
Marta slid her eyes as if looking for someone. She dropped her voice and leaned over the table where they sat reading the paper.
“Disinformation” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“Bruno told me. The Luftwaffe is losing more planes than ever before. Suddenly the Allies seem to be able to pinpoint the location of German planes at night. The British say their pilots have better night vision because they eat more carrots.”
“Carrots? I don’t understand.”
“They say that carrots improve night vision.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“It’s disinformation. Bruno thinks the British have developed a technology that has nothing to do with carrots — a system for detecting the presence, location, and even the speed of aircraft. It has something to do with electromagnetic waves. Don’t ask me to explain, but it has nothing to do with carrots.” She folded her section of the newspaper shut. “Come on. It’s time for us to dye your hair again, I think.”
“Already?”
“Just the roots.”
Lilo sighed. She wondered how long she would have to keep this up. When would it all end? Was it true what Marta had said about the British and this new technology? But how much would they have to blow up before they could stop the war? And who would be left? She thought of Django. Where was he right this minute? What was he doing? She missed him. She missed her mother, but she didn’t have to worry about her mother. She was sure her mother was dead. Years before, she had wondered about her father and felt that no one was really dead unless you knew it for sure. She had perhaps tried to trick herself into believing he was still alive somewhere. But the tricks were over. She was certain that Leni had sent her mother to Ravensbruck and that her father had little chance of survival. She had to face facts — there was no time for the dead.
When she did think of her parents, her mother and her father appeared in her imagination like the lifeless jointed bodies of the marionettes, but there were no puppeteers to animate them, breathe life into them.
“Is Sepp married?” Lilo asked suddenly as Marta worked the bleach into the roots of her hair.
Marta laughed. “No, but he has a special friend.”
“You mean a girlfriend?”
“Well, a woman. Not a girl. The Baroness von Schenck. She is at least ten years older but still quite beautiful. They often take tea together at the café near the theater we pass.”
Marta paused and looked reflectively in the mirror at Lilo. “You know, Lilo, we should think about getting ou
t a little bit more . . . just a little bit. It will look more normal.”
Lilo knew what Marta said was right. Even though she was supposedly out and under the cover of daylight, her life essentially consisted of moving from one interior to another, from the tailor’s room in the theater to that of Marta’s flat. She felt confined to the shadows of life inside as well as outside and never felt free to saunter through the sunshine outside. There were parks she would love to visit, plazas lined with cafés and sweetshops, but for all intents and purposes she might as well be a mole. It was her choice. Marta encouraged her to go out more, but she was simply too frightened. There was too much at risk, not the least of which was Marta. She was haunted by what might happen to Marta if she was discovered to be harboring a Gypsy.
Marta finished with the bleaching. “There you go. Now, sit here for forty minutes, then I’ll rinse your hair, and you’ll be as blond as ever.”
Lilo turned around to face Marta. “How long will this go on, do you think?”
“What do you mean, Christa?” Marta had taken to calling her Christa even at home. It was as if she had never known the name Lilo, and yet every time anyone — Marta or the people at the marionette theater — called her by this name, it caused Lilo to flinch deep inside.
“Will I ever be me again?”
Marta crouched down at Lilo’s knees and took both her hands in her own. “You are you. A name doesn’t matter.”
No! No! she wanted to scream. I am not me. I am afraid to walk in the sunlight. Every time I speak, I am afraid I might say something that will give me away. She thought of the people she saw in the theater, not just the men and women who worked there but the people in the audience. The children. Lots of children came to the performances. Normal kids, who had returned to school that fall, but where could she go?
She leaned forward and peered deeply into Marta’s gray eyes. “Sometimes I feel I just can’t go on with this . . . this ruse . . . this lie. I have lost everyone, and now I am losing me. Don’t you understand?”
Marta squeezed her hands again. A scrim of tears made her eyes glimmer. Her chin trembled. “It will end. Someday this war will end, and you will be Lilo again.”
Lilo wanted to believe what Marta had just said, but it was that quiver in her chin that gave her away. She was trying to be brave for Lilo’s sake. And I suppose, she thought, I must be brave for her sake.
“Come sit down with us!” It was Sepp at the café that Marta had told her about, and there was a woman sitting beside him. She was elegant, even regal. Her silvery hair was swept back from her broad forehead. She had a flawless complexion, and although she definitely appeared older than Sepp, she had very few wrinkles. Lilo felt Marta slow down.
“We shouldn’t,” Lilo whispered.
“No, remember our talk the other day? People will become suspicious if I keep you so completely tucked away. You have to join into life a bit more.”
But life stumped Lilo. For years now, her life had consisted of either prison or living in a make-believe world of a movie set and now a marionette theater. She no more belonged out here on Mozartplatz sipping tea, eating pastries than . . . Than what? she thought. One of the marionettes. It would be a performance, but with no one to manipulate the strings. She would hang there lifelessly at the table.
“C’mon.” Marta pulled her along. “This will be easy.”
There was a table of middle-aged and older Salzburg matrons next to the one where they sat with Sepp and Baroness von Schenck. The women were hardly fashionable, unlike the baroness. However, it was not their fashion sense that caught her attention but their ruddy cheeks, stoutness, and exuberant health. She thought of the wasted frame of her own mother. They all seemed dressed too warmly for the mild autumn day in tailored loden jackets and Tyrolean felt hats embellished with tufts of feathers and small pins and badges. Many of them wore knickers, thick stockings, and hiking boots. Most likely they were part of one of the local hiking clubs that flourished in the city. They exuded health and heartiness. This was what she with her bleached short blond braids and cheerful dirndl dress was supposed to grow into — the perfect Austrian hausfrau who after producing a number of babies of Aryan perfection would then go hiking in the mountains — the same mountains that Leni had celebrated in her first films, which served as the perfect expression of the Aryan ideal of lofty heroism and supernatural power.
“Hello, Marta and Christa!” Sepp stood up as they approached the table. “Please join us. This is my friend Baroness von Schenck.”
The baroness extended a gloved hand.
“A pleasure,” Marta said.
“Yes, a pleasure,” Lilo repeated.
“What will you have?” Sepp tipped his head and inquired. There was a slight sparkle in his eyes as he asked. It was the first time Lilo had ever seen him betray any facial expression whatsoever.
Marta ordered cider, and Lilo did the same. If I just sit here and don’t say anything . . . Just smile — no, not even smile. Remember the marionettes — a perfectly bland expression. If only she could dissolve behind a screen of vapidness, complete vacuity, so that she simply blended in with the surroundings.
Their cider came, along with a plate of delicious pastries. So far things had gone well. Another woman, one of the hikers, joined their table. The conversations centered on the trail that had been restored after last winter’s avalanche.
“Have a Topfenstrudel.” The baroness passed a small plate to the woman.
“Just a bit, please,” the woman said.
“Ah, and the Linzer Torte,” the baroness pressed. “It is delightful.
“No, thank you,” the hiker replied.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Gerta!”
“You know,” the hiker said as she swallowed a bite of the strudel, “they say that the really best pastry chefs did come from Czechoslovakia.”
“Well, now they’re ours!” the baroness exclaimed. Her green eyes glittered triumphantly. The conversation continued. The baroness’s remark was the closest they had come to politics. Mostly it was about the trails restored for summer hiking, the schedule at the theater, the last opera to be performed at the close of the festival. I am doing well, Lilo thought, but at the same moment, she felt something pinch her thigh. What is this? . . . It’s a hand, you fool, she thought. Sepp Lang is . . . She could not complete the thought. She had to get out. He was now stroking her thigh and pulling at her dirndl. She had to go. But could she? He was the puppeteer. She had no power. How could she signal Marta that something was wrong? Marta was deeply involved in a conversation with the baroness. What would the baroness think? This had to stop.
“I just remembered. I must get back to the flat, Marta. I promised Inga that I would be there. She is dropping off something for me to sew.”
“Inga?”
Inga was their upstairs neighbor, who had a horrid little dog, and neither Marta nor Lilo could stand her.
“Oh, yes!” Marta said, and nodded. “Yes, she did say she was bringing by something for you to mend.” Relief swept through Lilo like a freshening breeze. Marta got it.
They were not a block from the café when they dared speak.
“He tried to feel you, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, damn, damn, damn. I should have thought of that before we accepted their invitation. Sepp can be . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.
“Can be what?”
“Well, you know . . . an annoyance to some young women, but I never thought that he would . . . Well, never mind. You just have to keep out of his way as best you can. I’ll try to look out for you. But just stay out of his way. He’ll forget about you.”
And he did seem to forget about her. He never betrayed a trace of undue interest or chagrin over her abrupt departure from the café that day. The incident itself receded if not completely from her memory at least to the point that Lilo wondered if perhaps it had been accidental.
One evening she was working late
long after everyone had left the theater. The lights of the tailor’s workshop had been switched off except for the feeble glow of the single table lamp where she sat repairing Snow White’s costume for the performance the next day. The puppet was perched on a revolving stand in front of an oval mirror so Lilo could see the hem length as she turned it to check the evenness. She had for perhaps the tenth time wondered if Sepp’s advance could have been an accident. And the next moment, she thought how she and Django, whom she seemed to miss more each day, had never touched each other that way. Would she want him to touch her? Would she want to touch him? Maybe kiss him?
She felt a shudder deep within her heart and then grew very still. I love him. I truly love Django.
Soon the very air in the tailor’s room throbbed with this new awareness that burst upon her like a splash of moonlight on a dark and cloudy night. She set down the small scissors with which she had been snipping a seam from Snow White’s gown. He was alive; she just knew it. He was alive and missing her. Loving her. He was aching with a love for her as deep and profound as her own.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall.” A voice came out of the shadows. Then an image slid across the small oval mirror that crowded out the one of Snow White. Sepp! A hand dropped onto her shoulder. She felt herself being spun around on the swivel chair as he wrapped her in his arms.
“No!” she screamed.
“No one will hear!” His inky blue eyes had dilated in the dim light. He was holding her so tight she could hardly breathe. The thoughts came slowly to Lilo — one by one, like pebbles dropped into a pond. She dared not close her eyes but stared into the dead ones of his bland, expressionless face. Evil did not wear the grimace of Rumplestiltskin demanding the firstborn of the miller’s daughter. Nor was it the wicked queen in Snow White. Evil needed no such grimaces, but here it was before her — this soulless being, this iniquitous vagabond, this emissary from a godless world. She was unsure of how the scissors came to be in her hand. She thought she had set them down. But suddenly his mouth pulled into a scream. She jerked away from him. “Goddamn no good cursed German!” But then the vile words that sputtered out loud like an over-boiling cauldron were not German but Roma. Roma! Not even Sinti. “Bengesko nazi,” a cursed German. She couldn’t stop the cataract of Roma curses. He still held her wrist tightly. She saw realization dawning in his eyes. It was as if she could see the tumblers of his brain like the jewels or workings of a clock turning. He knows! She tried to wrench free but felt her knees buckle beneath her. She was on the floor. She saw a bloodstain blossom on his shirt beneath his armpit. But he seemed oblivious to the wound. His eyes were now fastened on her.